The tycoon, the dictator's wife and the $2.5bn Guinea mining deal
FBI investigating Beny Steinmetz's company BSGR after lucrative deal to extract iron ore from Simandou mountain range.
In Conakry, a gleaming hotel looms over the filth of the city. Behind it a small coastal cove acts like a floating rubbish dump, collecting brightly coloured detritus from the murky Atlantic and distributing it in piles in stubbly black rock pools on the beach. A group of gangly young men sit by an abandoned fishing boat, looking despondently out to sea.
But in the gleaming, chandelier-lit hotel lobby it is easy to forget the scenery outside. Here, European, Australian and Brazilian mining executives, in jeans and suit jackets, sip rosé as they check emails. African businessmen huddle in groups, discussing shareholdings and the possibility of chartering planes to reach remote sites.
Businessmen think nothing of hiring private aircraft to reach Guinea's abundant reserves of diamonds, gold, uranium, aluminium ore and bauxite, because the returns are unparalleled. The country is an almost textbook example of what some refer to as the "paradox of plenty": it sits atop some of the most significant untapped mineral reserves in the world while its people live in squalor, without clean water, electricity, education or infrastructure.
In years past, during the dying days of Lansana Conté, the army general who ruled Guinea with an iron grip for almost all of hisa quarter-century tenure, an Israeli-French billionaire could be spotted similarly holding court at Conakry's once popular Novotel. Beny Steinmetz, one of the wealthiest men in the world, came here, sources say, with a clear mission. "Beny Steinmetz wanted to make sure he was the closest white man to President Conté," said one former presidential aide of the president.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/30/africa-guinea-mining-bsgr-steinmetz